Machiavelli and the English Tradition

Abstract

Butterfield continued his critique of anachronistic historiography in The Statecraft of Machiavelli (1940).1 Its principal themes were Machiavelli’s characteristically ahistorical use of past examples, as contrasted with the more discerning approach of Guicciardini; and the relationship between Machiavelli’s approach to history and the method of the whig historiographers. Butterfield’s intention was not only to place Machiavelli in his context, but also to gain insight into his influence on Bolingbroke and Napoleon. Consequently, the formulation and implementation of public policy were seen as reflective of the methods used to understand human history.2 Butterfield saw Machiavelli’s view of the study of history as combining with particular intensity three tendencies of his era,

first of all a doctrine of‘imitation’, which conditioned Machiavelli’s attitude to the great men of the past; secondly an important thesis concerning historical recurrence, one that affected therefore the problem of the deduction of general laws from historical data; and thirdly a conviction of the superiority of the ancient world as a guide to human behaviour in the present.3